The Asskickers is a fun throwback to older, more difficult beat ’em ups. It has a great art style and fun story. Unfortunately, the game is plagued by problems and glitches. A demo is available on the official site as is the full retail version for $8.99, a price that seems a bit too high even if the game was problem-free. However, I do recommend that fans of the genre looking for a challenge try the demo. If it runs without any of the glitches, that price becomes a lot more reasonable!

Harry Potter is not primarily about friendship, courage, or love. Many times it’s pure luck that Potter triumphs over Voldemort or his minions. Maybe the message was intended to be “if you’re brave and love your friends, then it’ll seem like you’ll lose until chance happens to save you,” but even if that was intended, it isn’t the message I see. The message is that it’s important for us to remember the past.
Things always happen to work out for Potter. I’m not complaining. I loved the books. But realistically (I know, I know, it’s not realistic anyways), it sure seemed like Voldemort should have won. That was largely due to the community as a whole being unprepared because they refused to talk about him, consider the evidence, or properly teach history.
‘Voldemort’ should have been in everyone’s vocabulary. The threat of Death Eaters should have been considered more easily even if one held the assumption that Voldemort was dead. Open-mindedness, equality, and the pursuit of truth seem to be the themes that I see in Harry Potter.

Allied Star Police, developed by PopCap’s 4th & battery, is an RTS / defense game. You send waves of units along a straight path to battle the enemy’s units. What makes it so special? It was designed by nine-year-old Owain through the help of the Make-A-Wish Foundation for the iOS.

I don’t normally review free games on Game Boyz (because I’m unpaid, I choose to review games that would normally cost money), but I decided to make an exception for this one.

Allied Star Police was released yesterday! It was designed by fourth-grader Owain, who has leukemia. Make-a-Wish partnered with PopCap to make his dream real. The game is very short but a decent defense game. It’s free right now, so please give it a download! You can read more about this at www.PopCap.com/owainswish, and you can donate there as well.

Supreme Ruler: Cold War is more simulator and less game, showing users an in-depth simulation and welcoming them to see what effects their actions would have. Unfortunately, frequently there’s little way to know what most actions would ultimately do.

All done!
What’s next? The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance? I checked that out. I have Agent to the Stars and The Lonesome Gods already. But! Timothy Zahn has a new Star Wars book! Hmmm

The Hub, the new cable channel targeting kids and their families, is expected to announce tomorrow at its upfront that it has picked up a new series starring the quirky rock band The Aquabats. The series, which is expected to receive a 13-episode order, hails from FremantleMedia Enterprises.

This seemed like exciting news, but it was also from 3/23/11 and said that The Hub was expected to announce it. I looked some more and did find sites that confirmed it, but then they all referenced that first page. No, that first page didn’t confirm it. Thanks for doing your journalistic duty baddies.
So then I stopped Googling and just went to the Aquabats’ site.Welcome to THEAQUABATS.COM!

Hello and greetings from the AQUABATS SUPER SHOW central. Things are buzzing about like Killer Bees on a swarm and the first three episodes of the SUPER SHOW have been written and are currently in pre-production for the HUB!

I went to the Powderpuff Pilots dress rehearsal last night with gem, and we met up with Jenkins and Margaret. It was a lot of fun! Melissa had an awesome role, and she did a great job. It was about the first Women’s Air Derby in 1929. Besides being a fun performance full of good songs, it was also an interesting bit of history about which I knew little to nothing previously. Of course, I have since read about it on Wikipedia more.
Besides Melissa, I recognized a couple other people in the show. There were former Live Nudes performing, including Tony McConville! Woo hoo fun! You know what I wonder? Where do the performers look while on stage? Do different people do different things, or do they all usually use the same trick? It seems so strange to be staring at people who are staring off into the back of the room.
After the show we talked with Melissa and met Brandon before heading to Yogurtland. It was tasty. And Alex and I were wrong. Trader Joe’s is open until 10.
It was a great night!

Kard Combat by Hothead Games is a new strategy card game for the iOS. What first made me especially interested in the game was that it was co-created by Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering as well as countless other strategic card games. Kard Combat didn’t disappoint. There is a lot of strategy involved, and it’s very fun!

In my coverage of Another Night in Moscow 2011, the 1C Company press event, I discussed a new MMORPG, Royal Quest. I had the chance to get some of my questions about the game answered by the developers. For those who missed my initial coverage, let me recap a bit about Royal Quest. Developed by Katauri Interactive, Royal Quest is a colorful, vibrant game that seemed like a fast-paced click-fest. While it has lots of modern MMO ideas in it, I see echoes of Diablo and Ragnarok Online in its core gameplay, and I really enjoyed what I played of it. I was told that you could acquire castles, lakes, goldmines, and gardens as well fight others for their territory, raise pets, find rare cards, and earn loot through PVP. I’d recommend reading my preview in my last article if you’re interested or watching the trailer. You’ll find my interview following full of clarifications and additional information about Royal Quest. Do note that as English is not the developers’ primary language, I took the liberty of editing the responses for clarity. After some answers, I’ve included my commentary on the answer.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Another Night in Moscow 2011. It was my second time attending Russian game publisher 1C Company’s fantastic annual event held at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. Founded in 1991, 1C Company is the largest publisher and distributor of video games in Eastern and Central Europe. On 7/7, I got to check out all of their latest and greatest titles, eat authenticate Russian food, and of course, drink a lot of vodka.

Recently Capcom provided me with their latest Street Fighter iOS title, Street Fighter IV: Volt. Capcom has always iterated on its Street Fighter franchise, and the iOS platform is no exception. The big feature of Volt is online multiplayer! …if you already own the original, it simply comes down to whether you want to pay the asking price to play online. If you’re a competitive player or if you just like some human interaction, it’s worth it, but if you play mostly for the single player, you might not want to upgrade. That said, if you don’t already own Street Fighter IV on your iOS device, I think you should ignore the original even if you only like playing solo and jump straight to Volt. Street Fighter IV: Volt is the best fighting experience on iOS